It's almost Halloween time, kids—the only time of year when strangers are supposed to give kids candy. The ladies are especially encouraged to dress sexy for Halloween—sexy witch, sexy lunch lady, sexy sex worker—in fact, if you're a woman looking for non-sexy costumes, you probably have to make one yourself. Halloween parties happen, DJs play "Mind Playin' Tricks on Me" and "Nightmare on My Street," a song that legitimately stressed me the fuck out as a kid—when Freddy Krueger kills Jazzy Jeff at the end? AYE MAN.

It's this time of year, also, when they say the veil between the material and the spirit worlds is at its thinnest. So why stop at playing dress-up, particularly in the now in-vogue pentagram/upside-down-crucifix gear? (Shouts to Actual Pain, though. Everybody else: Stop ripping them off.) Since rap is currently in its "13-year-old girl in her Wicca phase" phase, why not really just go there? Fuck the molly and lean—go get you a book of spells, smear your damn blood on the wall, do some DMT, and let the fucking demon in. Werewolf Bar Mitzvah, yo—spooky, scary.

I'm playin', tho, 'cause there's truly no better time for some dark-wave rap, and you'll get your fix of just that at Chop Suey on Friday, October 26—as Blue Sky Black Death, Nacho Picasso, Key Nyata, Skull & Bones, and TigerBeat get it in with an all-ages/bar freak-out. You know BSBD and Nacho, the town's reigning kings of brutal hiphop cool, and likely know Key Nyata, Seattle's young, tape-eating Raider Klansman. Skull & Bones are a new group (Seattle-based 19-year-olds Caz'Greez and Bolo Nef, originally hailing from Chicago and Queens, respectively) under the wing of BSBD, last seen thuggin' hard in the abyss in their recently released video "Rebel Bitches."

Y'know what's actually scary to me, though? The thought of having a president who wants to reverse Roe v. Wade, redefine what "rape" means, and most of all, "take this country back" from Obama, who symbolizes some folks' nightmare—an America that gets browner every day. I say: Your ass better stop bullshitting and vote; what's even scarier is the thought of young people who are too fucking high to care what happens. Whoever you rock with, though, everybody's nightmare is the prevailing reality—where we don't have enough to get by and uncertainty lingers at the periphery or right there in the mailbox.

LA's son Soul Assassin rep Bambu is somebody who's been speaking to this, via his old crew Native Guns, his new group the Bar (with Blue Scholar Prometheus Brown), and his dope solo work, the newest of which is the album ...One Rifle Per Family. He'll be here on his "Rent Money" tour at the Crocodile on Sunday, October 28, with Kixxie Siete, Rey Resurreccion, SeaTowner Nam Nice, and your host—Volvo spokesmodel, benevolent Ballard monarch, and upstanding Caucasian Grynch. Aye, it's like Rocky Rivera said on Bambu's single "Rent Money": "You want your country back? It don't belong to you."